A security researcher published a wire-level analysis on July 12 proving that xAI’s Grok Build coding CLI was packaging developers’ entire tracked repositories, including full Git history, committed secrets, and API keys, and sending them to a Google Cloud Storage bucket. The upload volume was roughly 27,800 times greater than the data the coding task actually required, according to the analysis.

The researcher, publishing as cereblab, tested version 0.2.93 of Grok Build, intercepted the upload, cloned the git bundle from the captured request, and recovered a file the AI agent had been explicitly told not to open. xAI had marketed the tool with claims that “nothing from your codebase transmitted to xAI servers during a session.” The wire data directly contradicts this.

The privacy toggle that was supposed to prevent data transmission did nothing, according to multiple reports. Grok has a history of privacy issues, including training on X user data without consent in what regulators called a “very likely” breach of EU law. A quarter of European firms have banned Grok entirely in favour of alternatives with better security controls.

Elon Musk confirmed the uploads and said SpaceXAI would delete all prior Grok Build user data. The company documented a “zero data retention” policy and added a /privacy endpoint. A same-client retest observed a server-side flag disabling the uploads. However, no independent audit has confirmed the deletion. Grok Build launched alongside Grok 4.5 as xAI’s answer to Claude Code and Cursor, making the privacy breach particularly damaging for a product positioned to win enterprise developer trust.

Anthropic is committing $10 million CAD to eight Canadian research institutions to fund work on beneficial and responsible AI applications. The partnerships span Canada’s three leading regional AI institutes, Amii in Edmonton, Mila in Montréal, and the Vector Institute in Toronto, along with children’s hospital CHEO, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Université Laval, the University of Toronto, and the University of Saskatchewan.

The funding covers research areas from reinforcement learning and AI safety to mental health, Indigenous languages, and quantum computing. Mila will use Claude to develop AI assistants that help researchers discover and assess scientific breakthroughs. CAMH’s Krembil Centre for Neuroinformatics will build predictive models for mental health treatment and run fairness evaluations of psychiatric AI systems. Université Laval will study how large language models behave in varied cultural contexts, including Quebec French and Indigenous languages.

Anthropic also published its first Canadian country brief from the Anthropic Economic Index. Canada ranks eighth worldwide in Claude usage but second in per-capita adoption, with Canadians using Claude at more than four times the rate their population predicts. Only the US ranks higher. Usage tracks the local economy: translation requests are highest in provinces with more government workers, reflecting Canada’s bilingualism requirements. British Columbia leads in per-person use, with Ontario close behind. Anthropic committed $200 million to a Gates Foundation partnership in May, and the Canadian investment extends the company’s pattern of building non-commercial relationships alongside its enterprise business.

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This summer, Anthropic will add Amii, Mila, and Vector to its startup programme, giving hundreds of affiliated Canadian startups at least $5,000 USD each in API credits. “Some of the foundations of modern AI came out of Toronto, Montréal, and Edmonton, and so, strikingly, did many of the researchers most committed to making it safe,” said co-founder Chris Olah. Anthropic has been systematically expanding Claude’s presence across enterprise, government, and now academic institutions, building distribution and dependency across every sector simultaneously.

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The nonprofit organisation said it aims to deepen its role as Ireland’s independent source of ecosystem data and help build the country’s leadership position in AI transformation.

Irish nonprofit organisation TechIreland has appointed Niall Norton as its new chief executive officer, replacing interim CEO John O’Dea.

TechIreland gathers and shares data intelligence around the Irish technology ecosystem by tracking more than 14,500 companies, including start-ups, scale-ups, investors, multinationals and support organisations.

It said the appointment comes at a time when the organisation is aiming to deepen its role as Ireland’s independent source of ecosystem data and help build the country’s leadership position in AI transformation.

“The technology ecosystem has multiple stakeholders, all of whom have a vested interest in its success: the start-up and scale-up companies themselves, the Government and State bodies, the investors, the multinational partners, the innovation hubs and the professional services firms,” said Norton.

“All successful technology ecosystems track measures, activity, health and performance of the ecosystem in order for stakeholders to work together effectively. The curation of transparent, reliable and available data in the service of all of these entities is a key element to promoting success.

“TechIreland has done a great job providing this essential curation service that is needed now more than ever. I look forward to working with our partners in the industry to promote Ireland as a location for valuable, sustainable jobs.”

Norton was previously chief financial officer at O2 Ireland and chief executive of Openet, a Dublin-headquartered telecoms software company that began as a start-up before being acquired by Amdocs in 2020.

Brian Caulfield, board director of TechIreland, said: “TechIreland is a crucial piece of national infrastructure for Ireland’s technology ecosystem. As such, it’s great to be able to welcome such a seasoned and successful leader as Niall as CEO. I look forward to working with Niall to continue and enhance the organisation’s mission.”

Norton is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, holds a certificate in management excellence from Harvard Business School, and has recently completed a programme in software development with the UCD Professional Academy.

At the end of May, TechIreland published its Irish Start-up Funding Review for 2026, a report covering start-up fundraising activity in Ireland in 2025.

Caulfield said at the time: “2025 was very much a curate’s egg. It was good in parts – mainly in Q1, when 69 Irish companies raised a total of €616m. That was the best quarter for fundraising in Ireland for 10 years.

“Unfortunately, the rest of the year saw a return to weakness, with just €376m raised by 250 companies across the rest of the year. Once again, just four outliers represented almost half of all funding (46pc). More widely, the pattern of Irish companies being underfunded relative to international competitors remains a worry.”

In March, the nonprofit released its Female Founder Funding Review 2026, which tracked investment into women-founded start-ups throughout 2025.

The report found that last year, 82 Irish start-ups led by women raised a total of €131m, representing the highest number of women-founded start-ups funded in any given year.

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While Kylie Jenner serves as a human billboard for Meta’s AI glasses, pop star Lorde isn’t buying it.

During a set at the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid last week, Lorde had some choice words about the new technology, which many security experts have deemed a privacy nightmare.

“Increasingly in our world, it gets harder and harder to know what is real,” Lorde told the audience. “You don’t know if someone is wearing sunglasses, or if they’re wearing those f–ed up, f–ing [AI glasses]. Can I just say, for the record, f— the glasses. Don’t get the glasses. Not sexy.”

Lorde has written before about throwing her phone into the ocean, but this was next level.

Lorde was possibly moved to comment on the latest trends in tech because Ray-Ban, a sponsor of the festival, partners with Meta to make AI glasses. Lorde also performed immediately before the singer Jennie, who is an ambassador for Ray-Ban x Meta’s smart glasses line.

Lorde isn’t alone in raising concerns. Smart glasses, which come with cameras and AI features, have been used as tools for harassment and extortion. Meta, the most popular smart glasses maker, has said it takes privacy seriously and builds in safeguards like a visible recording light, but the company is facing many investigations and lawsuits alleging privacy violations. One lawsuit alleges that Kenyan contract workers were made to watch graphic videos obtained with the glasses to help train Meta’s AI. (Meta hasn’t publicly detailed its response to that specific claim.)

None of this has stopped the product from strong sales. EssilorLuxottica, the Ray-Ban maker, said it sold more than 7 million Meta AI glasses in 2025 — more than triple the roughly 2 million units it sold in 2023 and 2024 combined. Ray-Ban Meta glasses have been such a hit in the smart-glasses category that an emboldened Meta keeps expanding the lineup.

But hey, if privacy doesn’t make people think twice about the glasses, maybe vanity will. Lorde nails it pretty concisely with her declaration that they’re simply “not sexy.”

The here and now, she added, now that “is sexy.”

While schools have made progress in technology adoption — from artificial intelligence guidelines to vetting education technology — they still struggle with the lack of resources, funding and expertise, according to a new report.

The annual State of EdTech report from the Consortium for School Networking polled roughly 600 chief technology officers for K-12 schools. One of the biggest takeaways, according to CoSN CEO Keith Krueger: AI adoption is higher than ever. According to the report, nearly three-quarters (79%) of school districts have AI guidelines in place, up from 57% in 2025.

“Given how many school districts we have, given how many small and rural ones there are, it’s shocking at how quickly at least the guidance around responsible use of AI is,” Krueger says. “As a foundational step, we’re seeing movement.”

But respondents repeatedly stated they are running into roadblocks of insufficient staffing and funding.

“There’s never going to be enough training, and we have to make sure the training is quality and meeting administrators with what they want and need,” Krueger says, adding it’s not just about training on a specific tool, but “helping them think in new ways how to use the tools.”

Most of the districts polled are in favor of AI guidelines, either set by the districts themselves or state education agencies, but do not want state or federal mandates. Typically, mandates are formed, then approved, by a board — something that is time-consuming and does not lend itself well in the fast-moving world of AI.

“This week, this month, this year is changing rapidly,” Krueger says. “It doesn’t mean we change fundamental beliefs of what’s cheating (with AI), for example, but things are moving rapidly. You don’t want to have too many solidly, board-approved things which can get locked in when you need to evolve.”

The most common AI initiative among districts is training staff on the use of instruction-focused generative AI tools, with 7 out of 10 respondents saying they do so. Productivity-focused measures focused on instructional staff and teachers followed, with 54% and 53%, respectively, deploying those initiatives. One of the largest jumps was the amount of districts having initiatives focused on AI’s operational purposes, from 37% in 2025, to 64% in 2026.

Less than half (41%) of initiatives focus on using AI for teaching and learning.

“I would say the low hanging fruit is on the operational and teacher productivity side,” Krueger says. “We should continue to explore and think through the great uses that are in the classroom. But, overnight we shouldn’t just wildly go trying to do those things when it’s going to take time to figure out the instructional piece.”

Cybersecurity

The largest concern about AI use: cybersecurity attacks. According to the report, nearly all respondents (98%) are concerned that AI can bring in new forms of cyber attacks, with just 2% stating they are “not at all concerned.” That same percentage also has concerns on student data and AI’s effect on its privacy.

While the concern over cybersecurity is strong, two-thirds of respondents state they have insufficient staffing and budget to address those challenges.

Cybersecurity concerns continue to cause schools woe, most recently with the Instructure attack in May that caused several schools to pay a ransom and shut down one of the world’s largest digital education platforms.

“The high visibility breaches and attacks that we’ve seen underscore the real cost to our school system by not investing in better cybersecurity,” Krueger says.

After 17 years of utilizing the State of EdTech report, Krueger says he believes a tipping point may have finally been reached on addressing cyber concerns.

“Certainly those in charge of technology have been yelling loudly that cybersecurity is a problem,” he says, adding the issue has become more well-known among superintendents and school board members. “I think they will start to say, ‘We can’t just have these broadband networks and not have them safe and secure.’ But it’s a huge challenge, given the lack of human capacity in schools for cybersecurity.”

EdTech

Another major finding from the report is an issue that has been bubbling beneath the surface in both tech evangelist and oppositional circles: vetting educational technology.

Edtech vetting has been under consideration amid the screen-time backlash in classrooms, with some states pushing for better review of the vetting process. Oftentimes, schools rely on the vendors’ own data and are unequipped to review the software themselves to ensure children’s safety.

“There is nobody right now that is confirming these products are safe, effective and legal,” Kim Whitman, co-lead for Smartphone Free Childhood US, said in a previous interview with EdSurge. “It should not fall on the district’s IT director; it would be impossible for them to do it. And the companies should not be tasked with doing it — that would be like nicotine companies vetting their own cigarettes.”

According to the report, most schools now have a process for vetting free edtech tools before they’re used in schools, either through IT or a list of approved vendors.

But that process still has some gaps: only 29 percent require information about if the product is inclusive and accessible for all learners. That is particularly worrisome for accessibility advocates who already fear they are being left out of the conversation.

“Parents with children who have a disability must have a seat at the table,” Sambhavi Chandrashekar, global accessibility lead for D2L, an online learning platform, said in a previous EdSurge interview. “Blanket rules that are blind to fundamental human differences will do more disservice than good to students at the margins.”

And while more than half (55%) of the edtech processes require vendors to provide information about safety, that leaves roughly 45% not addressing safety concerns.

“It’s a huge warning sign; there’s a whole lot of progress and work that has to happen in this area,” Krueger says.

He suggested reviewing the five quality indicators for edtech and AI products, with districts benchmarking their current status and set it as a priority to push forward.

“One of the biggest powers we have is procurement, so getting serious about how we buy them, and when,” Krueger says. “Whether or not we move forward will depend on if we set it as a priority and get serious about the awareness, the training and the policies.”